Cherry Kino Festival! 4 - 21 November

Between 4 - 21 November, there are 12 Cherry Kino events, spread over the three weekends of the Leeds International Film Festival!

Each of the 12 events are listed on the blog, after this post - some of them are under the "older posts" link at the bottom of the page, too!

You can also find the Cherry Kino programme on the Leeds IFF website HERE





x Martha

After the Empire

Running Time:120 mins
Showing: Sun 21st Nov, 2010 - 13:00Sun 21st Nov, 2010 - 13:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

Wondermental cinema can be a politically discursive art form, with its ability to question, subvert, oppose and rebel. This programme presents an array of recent works chosen for their political engagement with the idea of empire, whether overt or subtle, asking you to think again. Controlled fury at the hypocrisy of the priveleged, the quietly powerful flag on the mountain, cinema and dictatorship in North Korea, a multi-screen subversive ethnicity, a cry of ‘why’ in Algeria, a revised Heart of Darkness, Leo Strauss’ connection with torture, photography as colonial appropriation, and rethinking the urban. Includes work by Gioli, Smith, Bärtås, Wong, Devaux, Breuer, Sanborn, Chen and Lurf.

This screening is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Double Tide

Director Sharon Lockhart
Country Austria,USA
Running Time: 99 mins
Showing: Sat 13th Nov, 2010 - 12:00Sat 13th Nov, 2010 - 12:00Ticket link @ Leeds Art Gallery (ART GALL) - £5.00 / £4.00

Utterly hypnotic and spell-binding, Sharon Lockhart’s minimalist exploration of landscape and labour as a female clamdigger works the low tides of dawn and dusk. Shot in only two takes with a static camera, we are lulled into meditation by the calm repetition of her (arduous) task in the mudflats, surrounded by the rolling mist and rosy orange hues of sunrise and sunset. Perhaps it’s also political comment: ‘There is something so primal about clamming – the act of reaching into the earth, the dependence on the rhythms of nature. All this struck me as indicative of a pre-industrial time and type of labour, so different from the industrial rhythms of a workplace.’ – S. Lockhart

This film is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Gunvor Nelson

Director Gunvor Nelson
Country Sweden,USA
Running Time: 90 mins
Languages English
Showing: Sat 20th Nov, 2010 - 18:00Sat 20th Nov, 2010 - 18:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

A rare screening of extraordinary work by Gunvor Nelson, the best kept secret in American experimental film. Magnetic intimacy combines with distance, a tension mirrored by astonishing camera work and editing. Respecting the filmed material, she lets it speak, from a portrait of her daughter Oona with a hypnotic soundtrack, to a comical feminist take on a stripper, to an indescribably beautiful swim, to a complex exploration of family. To filmmakers she offers this advice – ‘when you are really immersed, you, yourself… then the film emerges.’ As spectators, becoming immersed in Gunvor Nelson’s films is one of the best things you can do – something incredible emerges.

This screening is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Holly Would...

Running Time: 90 mins
Showing: Sat 20th Nov, 2010 - 15:00Sat 20th Nov, 2010 - 15:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

Ah, Hollywood. Light of our lives, thorn in our sides…This programme, mostly screened on 16mm, celebrates the delicious way wondermental filmmakers continue to subvert Hollywood and media ‘norms’, by turns dismembering it to re-member it as something new; pointing to the queer aspects that are present either through absence or identification; a deconstruction of linear narrative; a life of imitation; recontextualised film scenes breathing new life; a clever backwards door slamming scene in a Hollywood domestic; a lascivious recreation of a B movie; a very unusual ‘B star’ on a moving couch; and Peter Tscherkassky’s award-winning new work (yes, wondermental cinema has a Hollywood too!). With work by Tartaglia, Vaughan, Swiczinsky, Wong, Schreiner, Mahé, Czioska, Marte, and Tscherkassky.

This screening is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Mare’s Tail

Director David Larcher
Country UK
Running Time: 160 mins
Languages English
Showing: Sun 7th Nov, 2010 - 14:00Sun 7th Nov, 2010 - 14:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00
Sun 14th Nov, 2010 - 13:30Sun 14th Nov, 2010 - 13:30Ticket link @ Leeds Art Gallery (ART GALL) - £5.00 / £4.00

‘Mare’s Tail is an epic flight into inner space…the film-maker’s personal odyssey, which becomes the odyssey of each of us. It is a man’s life transposed into a visual realm…There are spots before your eyes, as when you look at the sun that flames and burns. We look at distant moving forms and flash through them. We drift through suns; a piece of earth phases over the moon. A face, your face, his face, a face that looks and splits into shapes that form new shapes that we rediscover as tiny monolithic monuments…The moon again, the flesh, the child, the room and the waves become part of a hieroglyphic language…Larcher’s trip becomes our trip to experience. It cannot be watched impatiently, with expectation; it is no good looking for generalization, condensation, complication or implication.’ – from Film Is, by Stephen Dwoskin. This screening is presented with the kind support of the Leeds College of Art, and all students of the College will be granted free access to both screenings on presentation of their student cards.

This film is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

My Love Has an Exquisite Corpse: Elemental Film Exhibition

Running Time: All Day
Showing: 6th – 21st November, daily except weekends, 10am-5pm

Leeds College of Art hosts Cherry Kino’s exhibition of elemental film, including work made by students on Super 8 and 16mm. Playing with the idea of the ‘exquisite corpse’ where each person contributes a ‘body part’ to make a whole, film is treated as an organic form and literally subjected to the Taoist idea of the 5 elements of Chinese medicine – water, wood, fire, earth and metal – putting it through various processes such as ‘drowning’ (water), wrapping around trees (wood), burning (fire), burying (earth), and chemical processing to reveal the silver (metal) in the film emulsion itself.
Fri 6 – Sun 21, 12:00 – 17:00
Leeds College of Art, Blenheim Building café
FREE

This event is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Mysterious Matter

Running Time: 90 mins
Showing: Sat 6th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Sat 6th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

‘Transformation is the thing’ states Larry Jordan at the beginning of his new film, Cosmic Alchemy. This selection of films focuses on the magical transformations that can occur through entering into the material of life. From Jordan’s hotly anticipated and stunning work, to Rebello’s great new piece full of substantial questions, to Rouhi and Fouchard’s astonishingly transcendental meditation, to the indescribably awesome ‘Li: the Patterns of Nature’ by Campbell, full of extreme close ups of nature’s processes on 16mm. These magical films remind us that ‘forms are not self-subsistent substances’ (Rebello), and that through the shared flesh of the material world, we can reach the stars.

This screening on the Leeds IFF website is HERE

x Martha

Night Jewels, Day Blooms

Running Time: 90 mins
Showing: Sat 6th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Sat 6th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

Startlingly beautiful and unique recent works of filmic art. Includes astonishing layers of light reflections on Super 8, a wondrous animated trilogy about clouds, a high contrast b/w film on the shore, a mesmerising study of swirling stars in a child’s toy, a divinely simple disorientation device, dreamlike sequences in red, yellow, orange, a wonderful film whose image plays the sound, a cricket’s song from beyond the frame, the dawn chorus of a new beginning, a jazz trumpeter, rain, night fireworks, and a glorious film shot in the ripples of a puddle. With work by Clipson, Tsuji, Cailleau, Harris, Machacek, von Greve, Miller, Dorsky, Henderson, Barthofer, Brundert and Scacchioli.

This screening on the Leeds IFF website is HERE

x Martha

Perestroika

Director Sarah Turner
Country UK
Running Time: 115 mins
Languages English
Showing: Sat 13th Nov, 2010 - 14:30Sat 13th Nov, 2010 - 14:30Ticket link @ Leeds Art Gallery (ART GALL) - £5.00 / £4.00
Fri 19th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Fri 19th Nov, 2010 - 19:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00
Watch trailer

An absolutely mesmerising journey into psycho-geography, this unique and highly lauded film examines landscape and ghosts, amnesia and representation, innovatively linking global warming to both an artistic and a personal crisis. On Turner’s initial trip to Siberia in 1987-8, she continuously filmed the passing landscape. After 20 years (during which time her two closest friends died), she ‘repeated both a train journey to Siberia and a process… And in this way I realised that photography as an act actually creates rather than records experiences…for me the film very explicitly functions as an environmental allegory. Are we all ghosts passing through as the world moves outside the frame of our (overheated) windows?’ – S. Turner

This film is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Rituals

Running Time: 90 mins
Showing: Sun 7th Nov, 2010 - 18:00Sun 7th Nov, 2010 - 18:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

The idea of journeys, rituals, trips is present in a lot of wondermental cinema. This selection of work from contemporary artist filmmakers delights in explicity tripping – from a gorgeous Super 8 ritual shot in the Lithuanian countryside, to a man’s search through a tropical forest for the god Apoekoe, a ritualistic camera dance with flowers, a (literally!) gutsy ritual of a taxidermist, a visionary journey through a metaphorical tunnel, a trip inside the body of film, and many more. Featuring well known and lesser known artists alongside each other, this screening will largely be on 16mm film, with an open atmosphere and a bar. With work from Garbštienė, Doing, Lowder, Gent, Cogan, Fleisch, Brundert, and others.

This screening on the Leeds IFF website is HERE

x Martha

Unravel – A Direct Film Animation Workshop

Sun 14, 12:00 – 16:00
42 Gallery (42 New Briggate, Leeds)
FREE
A project run by 'Unravel'

Come along and drop into this free hands-on workshop where you can paint, draw and animate directly onto 16mm film! Suitable for all ages. The project is called Unravel, who are: Chris Daniels, Joanna Byrne, Mark Pickles and Maria Anastassiou, and through workshops all over Britain, an epic 16 hour long hand-painted film will be created, which correlates in length with the 874 miles between the two extreme edges of Britain; John O’Groats and Land’s End (one 16mm frame = one metre). The film will link together and be created by local communities throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Truly collaborative filmmaking! This is a drop-in event, so no booking is necessary – come and stay as long as you like.

A sign language interpreter will be present for the whole event to encourage participation of deaf and aurally impaired people.

This workshop is on the Leeds IFF website HERE

x Martha

Warren Sonbert (1947 – 1995)

Director Warren Sonbert
Country USA
Running Time: 60 mins
Showing: Sun 21st Nov, 2010 - 16:00Sun 21st Nov, 2010 - 16:00Ticket link @ East Street Arts (ESA) - £5.00 / £4.00

A celebration of just a small part of the superb oeuvre of Warren Sonbert, one of the seminal figures of American wondermental film and rarely shown in the UK. He started making films in 1966 and was given a retrospective before he was 20! His early films feature denizens of the Warhol scene, with his late works culminating in astonishing symphonic montages, both silent and sound, uniting universal human gestures into singular works of moving image artistry. A prolific theorist and critic as well as filmmaker, his films display a deep love and understanding of cinema. The programme, curated by Jon Gartenberg, is entitled ‘Silent Rhythms / Sound Symphonies II’ and includes the films ‘The Cup and the Lip’ (1986, colour, silent) and ‘Short Fuse’ (1992, colour & b/w, sound), both on 16mm.

Read more

x Martha

Review of Takahiko Iimura in Leeds

This was a really interesting evening, with a full house at the ICS cinema at the University of Leeds, with Takahiko and Akiko Iimura both present. I want to say a really big thankyou to the following people and organisations, for help with putting on the event:

Takahiko and Akiko Iimura, for coming to Leeds and giving us the pleasure of your presence, and of course to "Taka" especially for his wonderful films!

Julian Ross, friend and co-organiser of the event, who liaised with Taka in Tokyo (and interviewed him), picked up the film prints, found some funding, and just generally co-organised it!

Jenni Rauch at WREAC (White Rose East Asian Centre, at the University of Leeds), who helped us to finance the event

Lucia Nagib, Head of the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds, for continuing support and enthusiasm

Arts Council England, who are supporting Cherry Kino until next year

Leo Enticknap, who was the projectionist on the night, and who has been so very helpful to Cherry Kino on all things tech-related

Michael Burkitt, who designed and made the original screen-printed posters for the event

Ollie Jenkins for taking some ace pictures

Will Rose for lending us a lens

And finally, everyone who made it along to the event - thankyou thankyou thankyou, you made it a really special evening!

Hope to see you all at future CK events during the Leeds International Film Festival, 4 - 21 November!

x Martha

Cherry Kino programme in the Leeds International Film Festival!

The Cherry Kino programme as part of the Leeds International Film Festival is finally HERE!!!

There are 12 events in total - you need to click onto page 2 for the 11th and 12th events.

And the Leeds International Film Festival brochure is all over town - Cherry Kino stuff starts on page 75. Dates are 4 - 21 November! A Festival pass only costs £80 early bird offer, which is really good value I reckon - and I'm not just saying that coz I'm involved in the festival! It is blindlingly good actually - you get 18 days worth of unlimited films.

Hope you like the look of it! The CK screenings will take place over the 3 weekends during the film festival (my my it's a long festival!). The first and last weekends will be at Patrick Studios, ESA, and the middle weekend will be at the Leeds City Art Gallery's new screening space. Gotta come!

x CK

TONIGHT: FREE Takahiko Iimura film screening + director!

TONIGHT! Monday 11th October, 6.30pm, ICS Cinema, University of Leeds
http://www.mixedcinemanetwork.org/node/84

The address of the cinema is: Clockworkers North Buliding LT 2.31
Here are directions:

Go down University Road, located on the left-­‐side of the Parkinson Building, walk past Baines Wing and Great Hall and there will be some big gates on your right. Go through the gates into Clothworkers Court and the building straight in front of you is the Clockworkers North Building. Please check here to download the campus map

Takahiko Iimura will be joining us for a very special screening of a selection of his films, most on 16mm. Come a little early to avoid disappointment, as there are only 70 seats in the cinema.

And for an interview with the director, carried out by Julian Ross (who is co-organising the event with me), see here

See you there!

x Martha